Annotations by Alexey Sklyarenko

At the picnic on Ada’s twelfth birthday Marina (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Van’s, Ada’s and Lucette’s mother) shows to Van and Lucette the exact pine and the exact spot on its rugged red trunk where in old, very old days a magnetic telephone nested and pronounces the words ‘currents’ and ‘circuits’ with an actress’s désinvolture (uninhibitedness):

Venena + Blok + Azov = Veen/even + Nabokov + laz/zal = Neva/Vena/vena + nebo + vokzal = zveno + balkon + Eva = venok + zloba + Neva = zakon + obval + Veen

Venena – Lat., poison; in the third poem of his cycle Plyaski Smerti (“The Dances of Death,” 1912-14) Alexander Blok (1880-1921) mentions a Jewish chemist sighing in his sleep and a closet marked Venena:

Describing his first visit to Ardis, Van Veen (the narrator and main character in VN’s novel Ada, 1969) mentions the portraits of his ancestors:

In her last note Aqua (in VN’s novel Ada, 1969, Marina’s poor mad twin sister) mentioned a klok (piece) of a chelovek (human being):

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Mlle Larivière’s (Lucette’s governess who publishes her stuff under the penname Guillaume de Monparnasse) wrote a novel entitled Les Enfants Maudits:

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van Veen mentions a riddle that he whispered in Ada’s ear on their first night in “Ardis the Second:”

In VN’s novel Ada (1969) Van and Ada find out that they are brother and sister thanks to Marina’s old herbarium that they discovered in the attic of Ardis Hall:

Odon/Nodo/odno + Omega = modo/mood/doom + Onega

Onega + zero = ozero + nega

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote (who imagines that he is Charles the Beloved, the last self-exiled king of Zembla) mentions three conjoined lakes called Omega, Ozero, and Zero:

In Canto Four of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) describes shaving:

Since my biographer may be too staid

Or know too little to affirm that Shade

Shaved in his bath, here goes: "He'd fixed a sort

Of hinge-and-screw affair, a steel support

Running across the tub to hold in place

The shaving mirror right before his face

In Canto Three of his poem John Shade (the poet in VN's novel Pale Fire, 1962) speaks of IPH (a lay Institute of Preparation for the Hereafter) and mentions "big if:"